You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Pedalin' Into Your Audience's Heart

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Peter and Adam take a speak-pipe question about how to get some use out of the pedal in Jazz scenarios!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Adam. Hey, Peter. I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear Podcast. Jazz, explained. Explain what we were doing there, Peter. What were we doing?

Well, you know what? It took me about three seconds. I thought we were on a delay. We're still over Zoom here. So I thought something got stuck with you. And then I put together your little pun. You were doing. Oh, something stuck with me.

Something's definitely. You were doing a, you were exhibiting sustenance with a sustaining tone, right? I was sustaining a tone because it's a little, that's what we like to call on the biz, Peter, a little foreshadowing. That's right. I don't know. We might even call back later. Those are all inside terms. I don't know if you know about those.

Hey, buddy, stage left, right now. Stage left. That was a little foreshadding to our speak pipe. We've got a speak pipe today. But if you're new to the show, first of all, where you've been? Yeah. But if you don't know, we have this. No, no.

Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. If you're new to the show, welcome. Welcome in, much love, fam. Come on. Come on, Adam. That's much. Welcome to the show. If you want to ever ask us a question about jazz piano or anything, really, practicing, career, business, anything like that, you can go to you'll hear at.com and leave us what we call a speak pipe.

There's a button there that says, leave us a voice message. You can do that. And we will listen to your question. Well, we don't call. We do call it a speak pad, but that's, I mean, you make it sound like what we call the speak pop, speak. speak pipe corporation. We invented that term. Really?

Because I feel like we use a service called speakpipe.com in order to gather these things. It's the greatest speakpipe.com and they should be thanking us for giving them so much. I mean, we've literally turned it into like a brand like Kleenex where it's like that's what you. Leave us a speak pipe. Leave us a speak pipe. Exactly. That's what people think of the dozens and dozens of people think of that listen to this show. That's right.

I think of voicemails. That's right. That's right. Cool. Okay, so this one's going to be the question, and I think the topic is kind of short and sweet. So we're going to see where this is going to go. But I think this can be on the shorter side, not because we aren't brilliantly prepared to expound upon and to drop knowledge, as we would say in the biz, drop knowledge from stage right or stage left. We've been working on this particular episode for months and months.

That's really doing lots of research. I actually flew to Paris for two. weeks to do a little bit of research on sustained pedals so we're ready to go here i actually rode my bike to new york so that i could pedal my way to an answer okay yeah exactly like peter's riding all over the i mean look at how much we're doing for our dear listeners we would go to to all corners of the earth you know or we just listen to it and see what i'll all right so this is sam from the u.k hi peter and adam um just want to say i've been loving the podcast and i've only been listening for a couple of weeks now, but I'm absolutely hooked.

I was wondering if you guys could talk about the place of the sustain pedal in jazz and sort of like how to integrate it, what kind of styles and how to use it well. Thanks, guys. Much love from England. All right, thanks for the question, Sam. The answer is it has no place in jazz. You'll hear it. Is that our answer?

Yeah, you shouldn't use it in this music. No, of course not. Peter, right? That would be a great binary. I love binary answer. You know what I mean? When it's like, should you do this? Yeah, I'm a yes or no guy.

No. You'll hear it. Yes or no. Okay. No, of course we should use it. I think that I end up sort of preaching against overuse of it more than underuse because that's what I hear other players doing. Not necessarily really high, high level players.

I think have a good feel for it and like really honor the pedal with the attention that it deserves. but I think a lot of sort of students and intermediate players as you're on that journey I think what happens is you start to want to hear a certain sound a certain resonance from the instrument a certain like kind of perception

of bigger chords bigger sounding things and the easiest way to sort of do that sometimes is with the pedal and with the sustained pedal we're talking about the one on the right and I think maybe we could talk about both the right and left pedal on this episode because I feel like

to what you're saying, Peter, beginners and intermediate students overuse the sustain pedal, but advanced students overuse the left pedal that you could call the soft pedal, but it's not actually the soft pedal. What's it called the sustenuto or something? I thought that was the middle one. Tenuto. Tenudonitis. It's the soft pedal. It absolutely is the soft pedal. We also call it the soft pedal. I want to get the official names here. Hold on. How do we not get this in our years of research? You can tell. We tell. We tell. We tell. We tell.

take peddling seriously. Well, no, but I mean, he's asking specifically about the sustained pedal. Unicorda. Unicorda. Let's just play a unacorda. I want a one accorda. And a dopio espresso, but just a unacorda. So, yeah, I think the sustained pedal is something that in a way, beginners overuse it,

but it's really more of an advanced technique to use it within jazz, especially to be able to hear the effects that it has. So the most basic thing about this is to be able to really listen as you're using it in different situations as you're practicing. Because you have to get used to what the effect is. Because it's such a, like, it's not like playing classical music where a lot of times the music tells you when to use it. You still have to know how to use it. But it's telling you the times to use it and presumably the times not to use it. In jazz, like it's kind of part of the improvisational flow when you want to use it to get a certain sound.

but if you don't understand what that sound is and then you get on the gig, you're going to be mashing it down probably too often or maybe even like when you're tapping your foot and then you start hitting it. I see some people do that. And then also, well, go ahead. Say what you have to say about that

because then I want to get into like different gradations and more advanced because it's not, talking about not binary. It shouldn't be on and off switch because you can do little things with it, right? You know, it's funny because the better the piano is the more expressive of the piano. The sustain pedal can become

one of your your your most deadly weapons for expression like it can become your most useful tool for expressing yourself and not just in long languid legato passages but even in like fast lines and stuff but you have to know the the depth of it the gradiation of how how it affects the sound in the different registers it's different in each register too so it just takes a lot of experimentation and then there's all sorts of different ways to use it you know of course you can just barely let the dampers, you know, hanging down on the strings. It gives you a whole different effect than not. You can go full on. Of course, that opens everything up. You could also grab things, Peter. I use this a lot, especially in comping, of like, you know, a nice staccato note and

grabbing with the pedal just an instant after you hit it. And you can really get a very cool forte piano effect, essentially. Yeah. There's all different kinds of effects. What I hear most often from most of our, our, um, beginner and intermediate students is just laying on it thick. Yeah. As a mode to express yourself and it's just on, you know, for way too much. And so I actually have a lot of beginner students. I make them put their right foot behind the bench. That's good.

And practice without it. Because you do need a certain amount of, of facility in your hands first. Yeah. Before you really, I think, appreciate its uses or else you're just going to cheat too much with it, you know. Yeah, and I think sometimes if you practice with too much pedal, it can give you a false sense of security. And also it can kind of muddy up things that you really need to be hearing when you practice.

Like, are you playing a chord, you know, with all the notes at the same time? When you have the pedal going from the chord before it, it can make it seem like you're playing evenly between the fingers or between the hands when you're actually not. So it kind of puts this sheen or kind of reverby kind of thing. It's like practicing in a hall with like really big reverb and no people in there. It can give you the illusion that you have this great big sound, but it's doing a lot of the work for you. So I agree with that. You know, you can put it behind your bench.

You can also sometimes put it underneath the pedal if you really are doing too much unconscious sort of pedaling. Like you shove your foot under there. And if none of those work, you can chop your leg off. That would be considered an extreme solution and kind of a one-way situation. But, you know, do it. That's not great advice. YMV. Yeah.

But I will say that, so just to your point, though, is like, if you play a chord and you have the pedal down, just know that you're not just hitting those notes. Those notes are now resonating the rest of the strings and the overtone the strings. So you are making a bigger sound by playing a chord with the pedal down. And even if you keep your hands down, right, then with it off. Sympathetic vibrations. Would that be something you might be interested in? It is. but you probably don't want that all the time.

Yeah. Right? So just I would actually, you know, you could take a week and start your session off or end your practice session, which is messing around with the pedal, with the sustain pedal, with the unicorta pedal, even with the sustenuno pedal, if you can ever figure out. I've used it like twice. I know. I'm always saying I'm going to, I know exactly how it works.

I've even worked out. I know, we do. I worked some times to use it. It's never quite worth it, though. It takes too much brain power. But, but, because you imagine getting to a jam session and being like, they're like, yeah, let's, let's play. Grubin High. Okay, cool.

Can you wait just a second? I want to check and see if this is a susten noodle pedal is working. Everybody be quiet a second. I'm going to be testing this out a little bit, okay? Yeah, easy. Yeah, but, you know, it just takes messing around. If you don't have a real piano, get to real piano, because I don't think they've fully figured it out yet on these, on these electronic pedals. There's nothing like a true sustained pedal and a true unicorta pedal, which maybe we could talk about next.

You love saying it's in a corner, don't you? Well, now that I've been an expert on it, Peter. You're trying to lock it in. I know what you're doing. You just looked it up, but now you're like, if I can say it 10 times in the next 10 minutes, it'll be locked and loaded. Well, you know, it's because we always call it the soft pedal here,

like colloquially in America. That's what it does. That's what it does. Well, it does, and it doesn't. So let's get in there. It's like Tim Apple. It's not his name, but that's where he works. So it's like you're getting both best of both worlds. Timmy.

It actually does different things on different pianos. So on a grand piano, it shifts the keyboard and the hammers over a few millimeters or centimeters to the right, usually. It could be, you could, I've played on pianos where it goes a little too far. Yeah. It starts hitting. In the next mode. But there is a depth thing with this.

This isn't also a binary pedal. Like you just press it all the way down. And that's one way or all the way off. It has a huge spectrum of a different sound. And I always spend a little time at the beginning with a new piano at a club or a hall getting used to the unicorder. Where is the sweet spot for what I need it for? It does work as a soft pedal. If you need to play softly, you can move it over.

Usually that halfway three quarters way, Peter, you're going to find this big, beautiful, bell-like, but soft attack. And that's where a lot of the butter and the ballads can come from. Yes. And I think that it also, it not only makes. it's softer because you have less strings being struck by the hammers, of course. But when you do get into those little gradients in between, it changes the tone. It changes that. So it's not just about playing softer.

It's about giving you another texture and timbre. And so especially in some ballad situations that can be very effective to try those. And I love your suggestion. I highly recommend that. And second that when you're checking out a piano, don't forget to check out, you know, you want to see how the action is. You want to see how the different registers, the evenness, you know, what the travel on the keys are, all those kinds of things.

But also, yeah, what's the pedals like? And what will it let you do? And what will it not let you do? What's going to be more difficult? So you don't get surprised once you get into the actual use scenario on the gig. Yeah. It can be a very useful pedal. Now, I did say more advanced students, I've noticed, especially if I think they're feeling

nervous or like they don't want to overplay. or they're somehow feeling some kind of in their head about it. They'll put on that unicorda to try to soften the blow or to round out the sound. It does give you a nice round sound. On some pianos, it actually makes it sound like you're playing, you know, a Steinway in 1959 or something. You know, it has this like you're on a record all of a sudden. It can fin things out too on some instruments depending on the room. Like I was saying on, it's different on pianos because on an upright piano, it doesn't work most

uprights. It doesn't work that way where it slides the keys over just because that's not how the strings are light out. It actually puts the hammers in a more shallow position. So it is much softer. I find those on uprights to be nearly useless. It just kind of messes with the throw of the hammer in my situation. And it's harder to control. So I will almost never use it. Also, uprights aren't the loudest pianos anyway. So you don't, you almost never need. And some operates I've seen, I want to say it's one of the Korean manufacturers. Maybe it actually, when you put the unicorda pedal it puts like a felt

banner in between the hammers and the no no that's that's the Yamaha I'm going to forget the model number but that's actually the middle and there's a notch on the Yamaha oh that's right it's like a practice situation that you're right

those are awesome by the way yeah they are singer songwriter Gabriel Cahain who actually Adam Neely played on one of his one of his videos Who? A friend of the show, Adam Neely, played on one of his videos.

But you should check him out, man. He's so good. And he made a record, beautiful songs, but the piano is almost always has that piece of felts in between. It sounds really cool. It almost sounds like a finger-picked acoustic guitar or something. It's very cool. Right. Right.

A little bit of a softening. Okay, two other things about the sustain pedal since we pretty much talked about the Uda-Corder pedal the whole time. The question was about sustained. But two things I just thought of. one is make sure To me, I love a soft pedal So sit here So one thing is like

In order to sort of You know Define or start to refine your conception And understanding of what the sustained pedal is And what it does is Is look at the inside of a grand piano Or an upright You can have to kind of pull the front thing off of the upright

If you're going to do this But just look at what it's actually doing In terms of like the dampers like how it's moving them away and then as you lift your as you press down on the pedal and then slowly let it back up and see what it's doing and like when it starts because it's not oh now it's reaching the hammers and it's back there's all this in between and depending so once you start to understand physically what's happening to the strings and look at the bass strings the tenor the treble because it's a little bit different for all of those um that'll start you'll start

to understand what it can do and then the other thing is is like as you're practicing especially on battles when you do want to use a lot of sustain pedal and go deep When you come up, when the harmony is changing, and normally you need to do that so that the same notes don't ring through. Make sure that you understand what it means to come all the way up and go back down quickly. A lot of people come up. They think they're all the way up and they're not and they get a little bit of bleed through or unintentional sustain. And that's a lot of times when I'll just be like you're playing too much sustain. It's not like you're using it too many places, but you're not letting it up enough.

Of course, you have to use your ears as you go and all the panels are different. So you have to be thinking about the sound that you want and making sure that your foot is in line with that. But it starts with understanding the mechanics of it and then making sure that you're comfortable going with the full range of the pedal motion. And if we have any open studio members here, you should check out Fred Hirsch's course,

thoughts and experiment solo piano, because he has a whole lesson talking about the sustained pedal and the unicorta pedal and his thoughts on it too. And so if you're an all-axis pass or piano access pass or an open studio program, member, which I know we have a ton of listeners who are, go check that out because Fred will also have a lot of, I think he actually has some like exercises, Peter to practice with your foot. You know, we had a foot cam on him.

That's right. That dude loves the, uh, I believe he was wearing all birds. Uh, fun fact. He wasn't wearing all birds. Yeah. Which apparently work really good for pedaling the piano and sounding great like Fred Hirsch. Yeah.

Uh, all right. So Peter, before we get out of here, uh, have a little word from our, uh, word from our sponsor. All right. Well, thank you for the. words and Adam it's great to have you back and I look forward to the next episode of the You'll hear of podcast you know what we do we do it all the time hey you know what they should do though Peter you know what they should do who they should leave us our listeners oh dear listeners dear listeners they should leave us a rating and review you can do that wherever

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Leave us seven stars. I like how you kind of go into your stoner dope doper kind of voice when you say that corporate. I'm wearing my chakos, buddy. I don't know if you saw it, but I got new sandals. Awesome. All right. Well, until next time. You'll hear it.